Activities Program at Medialab-Prado

Evening: 4 pm – 7 pm: LaptopsRus roundtable about collective works

These seven works ranging from DIY Arduino, open source, recycled materials to eleborate hi-definition multi-camera set up present the various disciplines at work in the current AV performance scene. The collaborative open source nature of these works revealed in this AVlab encounter " behind the scene'' how and why of the works in the making. Sharing technical knowledge aside, we further explore the conceptual and narrative aspects that credit an 'author' or 'authors" to a work.

The seven selected works, each presents its own trajectory in developing a self (or collectively) realized public performance. Kazaroff | Prack | Tamplin's 3 screen work brings together analogue machines along with keyboard controllers, live cameras with live sound processing; Patricia Aragón Martín and Cristina Ghetti of ::resistencias:: take pressure sensors as their interactive medium. Their work charters a living, breathing architecture that is sensitive and reactive to its users and dynamic, adaptable in its ever-shifting structure; Maca Moreno' s PORNOSONORO, absolutely post-porn, links bio-interface in open circuit with her explicit sexual output; Ioann Maria's experimental project Artificial Rat equates the rat as robot as machine, programmed to manipulate human emotions; Caen Botto's Panoptyk Paradox, when Escher meets Foucault, ultimately debates the infinity of digital visual expansion, as captured in all angles hi-def imaging, its implication in virtual habitation, nonetheless controlled and monitored; Randa Mirza emerges from the wrecked post-war Beiruit to make a city. In its camera active mode, through colorization, jittering tempo and guided rhythm, the city in the making makes up tales between fiction and reality; Harry, presented by A-li-ce of Homemade Collective, with its raw ingredients (cut papers, prepared video, live webcam input) spooned, fried, stewed in bleak black and white visuals conjures up a nightmare in loop, deep and emotional.

· Kazaroff | Prack | Tamplin: Kazaroff | Prack | Tamplin

Gregorio doesn’t use a computer. gregorio uses 1 cassette player, a programmable battery from the 1990s, live radio, a buddha machine and a few more things. Marcos does animation in real time, that react to sound and blend into images captured live. Ivor (i.r. tamplin) uses a sampler with scripts in a computer run by a keyboard, with live audio processing. Together, they perform an audiovisual set based on improvisation that aims for the maximum integration of audio and images.

Marcos Prack. A graphic designer and photographer, he has worked and continues to work at various agencies and design studios in Buenos Aires y Madrid.Since 2005, he has formed part of the world of live visuals; since then, he has worked with musicians and DJs on a number of projects.

Gregorio Kazaroff (sound module, CDs, cassettes)Active on the free improvisation scene and in sound experimentation, Greg was born in Buenos Aires and lives in Madrid.

In the last few years, his activities have included the score for a documentary feature-length film; live spontaneous musical intervention with the BKL trio in the play "Ala Marlon" by Maite Dono; live improvisation in soundtracks for silent films at the Círculo de Bellas Artes; and annual concerts at La Casa Encendida as a member of the FOCO orchestra in the Festival Internacional de Improvisación Hurta.

Ivor R. Tamplin. He is a composer and musical producer for physical theatre productions (Forbidden Theatre Company, Bazar Kolobok) and an occasional DJ. POAV (Pequeña Orquesta Audio Visual) was his first experience in the audiovisual world where he is now involved with K|P|T, which he builds soundscapes for based on his own music, others’ music, and sound references from TV, cinema and radio.

· ::resistencias:: Patricia Aragón Martín and Cristina Ghetti: TANGU

Tangu is the first interface project created by the ::resistencias:: group. This electronic device lets us map the place where the user(s) are and provides the necessary input to modify the architectonic space through artistic processes.

It is based on a tactile surface run by Arduino, which sends data input to the computer via USB connection. The data is returned by the proper programming as output, thanks to Open Software like Processing or PureData, to provide digital audio and video.(cc) 2010.

::resistencias::Research and making participatory interfaces, easy to use and to lea, using open source programmes and low cost materials, to be used in multiple artistic projects encompassing multi-author and work in progress concepts. Comprised of two visual artists: Patricia Aragón Martín and Cristina Ghetti. (cc)2009.

Multimedia action resulting in an audiovisual performance where video and audio are mixed in real time.

The aim of these visuals is to develop a new artistic-pornographic collective imagination, through live editing of recordings of explicit sex, to the beat of a specific soundscape, created by the participants in the performance.

Sonority created by the bio-interface of the participants, which, through their direct contact, is charged with the hyper improvisation of the philharmonic manipulator.

Maca Moreno (1980, Cuenca _ Madrid, Spain) from Bellas Artes Cuenca, her artistic background linked to livecinema and readymade_tecnologico (technological readymade), known as vjmac on the VJ scene since 2006, part of the laptop generation, and a visual alchemist on the Spanish scene.

“VJMAC, technologically incorrect and a cracker of represented sex, she rides over Pixels, delighting in errors in images, recreating herself in a new digital orgasm.”

· ioann maria: Artificial Rat

The project is questioning relationship between a human and machine, provoking an interaction between them. Creation of a rat – robot, which appears in human's environment, has to be identical to the physical animal in both behavior and appearance. In the closed experimental space, human will be forced to interact with the “animal”, which actually is just a programmed mechanism. This robot should understand human’s feelings, thus using the biofeedback technology, changes in emotional state are going to be send as a signal for the rat so it can response to human’s action. Artifcial Rat has been conceived during DORKBOT Alba sessions. It is a work in progress. The biofeedback tools built for this project will be demonstrated.

Ioann Maria- new media artist, instructor, flmmaker, vj. Member of dorkbot alba -people doing strange things of electricity-, organizer of LPM Live Performers Meeting. With her background in multimedia arts, she now experiments with new media technologies and interactive arts, exploring new possibilities in creative artistic-scientifc demonstration. In her recent solo and collaborative projects she investigates the issues of physical computing and human-computer interaction.

· VJ La mirza: Making the City

Making the City is a subtle play between fiction and reality. It stimulates the public, involving them in a game-like experience about the postwar condition of the city they dwell. The spectator moves within the city from high-rise buildings to street corners, consumer spaces to abandoned sites, and cutting across a range of iconographic personas on billboards and posters.

A graphic experience in the pixel world of consumer based technology (DV), Making the city layers rhythm, tempo color and form, capturing the movement and transposing the banal in the frame of performance, a live video and music performance based on tension between image and sound.

Visual artist/photographer/image maker, La mirza aka Randa Mirza started mixing live vidéo footages as a hobby. Born in Beirut (Lebanon) in 1978 where she lives and works, La mirza shoots her own vidéos inspired from the urban landscapes and the specific signs of our contemporary world.

· Claire Fristot:Harry with Collectif Homemade

HARRY is an audio-video performance created by Claire Fristot aka A-lice, who created the video content and scenography, with 2 musicians, André Fèvre and Domitille Sanyas. This project was created at MAKI, based at Angouleme's old slaughterhouses, in october 2009 and has been played at Vision'R Festival in Paris in may 2010.During this presentation Claire Fristot aka A-li-ce will present Homemade Collective and HARRY A/V performance, explaining the working process, and will show a video and pictures.

"HARRY" is about « going deep into the daily life of a man named Harry» and is inspired from a text of Hubert Selby Jr.

They organize it as an audio-video set but also as a installation in motion, in which is included the public. During the performance they invite the public to follow the emotionnal steps of a human being, going deep into his nightmare. The atmosfear is dark and sensitive.

The video is only black and white, generated by a webcam, a security camera, live cut papers, and prepared footages, and the video performer organizes her live video as a cooking experience with objects. The sound is only made with objects as metal pieces, glass board, pipes, and so on ; the 2 performers evolve into the room, going from a sound point to another one. Light and scenography are really important, putting in light performers' gestures.

The HOMEMADE project fits into a collaborative interdisciplinary art approach. It organizes itself and join them during performances sessions, in which the performers and processes change according to the place and the time of action.The performers’ gestures and the tools they develop are not hidden from the public, taking part into the creation process. The Homemade collective is composed of A-li-ce, Auderoseselavy, Raquel Meyers, André Fèvre, Domitille Sanyas, Junk Food + guests.Claire Fristot aka A-li-ce, who will present the project, works as a video artist for theater projects and as a vj , in plus of Homemade and personal projects.